Along Came a Spider
by Nerumi H
Summary: She would not let them go to waste.


.title.: **Along Came a Spider**

.summary.: **And she would not let them go to waste.**

.characters.: **Meiko – Kagamine Len – Kaito - Kagamine Rin**

.warnings.: **idk guys maybe extremely graphic gore and cannibalism.**

.album art by.:** I'm an idiot. Credit needed.**

.a/n.: **Ughhhh titles and summaries? This would have been up months ago had I thought of one quick enough. Anyhow... THANK YOU FOR CLICKING. I'm really stupid. I bitch forever about people writing direct songfics, and yet here I am. I was listening to the English version of Evil Food Eater Conchita (by AMAZING cover artist Miku-tan, definitely check her out on YouTube!) and my mind just started going on about it...so here I am, adding backstory and plenty of gore to the story of Conchita!**

**I hope you like it! Reviews would be awesome, same with any concrit you can offer.**

**X**

Within the belly of her mansion, Conchita was tending to her own.

It was an impatient creature, never ending with its whines and moans, perennial in its need. It was always that way, wide and gulping up everything she slipped past her lips, even when there wasn't much to spare. Her youth; watery soups, bread with the light sheen of oily mold, the dirt from under the stones that cowered in the alleys. And once, to thrill her friends, Conchita had placed a fat grasshopper on her tongue—among the little boys' and girls' cries of amazement and disgust, her stomach reached a paw up her throat and swiped up the insect, devouring it whole. She felt it squirm within the constricting muscles of her throat. From then on she added bugs and butterflies to her menu when the nights went long and starved of dinner.

Today she sat in her throne, luscious red fabric pooling around her feet like waves of lava, a smile on her face as she delicately made sure that her sleeves were not dragging in her meal. The cook stood across from her, apprehensively regarding each path the fork took from her plate to her pallet. If she didn't know any better she'd think he was making sure she was enjoying his gracious artistic work, but she was very aware that he wasn't nervous about her judgements.

At least, not the judgements of his food. He knew as well as she did that she loved everything she could swallow. It was a fact she was no longer embarrassed about but took as her own title; the striking admirer of all foods, all cultures, all creations put on earth, absent of the bias and cruelty of other humans. Everything was worthy, in her eyes. Nothing should be put to waste.

She sawed her knife into the flesh of today's beast, broiled to a comforting perfection synonymous with a crackling fireplace close to her frozen fingers, and in this case, her frozen insides. They locked up and ached when she wasn't salving their woes with food.

The nameless meat was garnished with ivy as poison as it came, marinated deep with the tart venom of cobras she'd come to realize was a favourite addition of hers. Her goblet bubbled with champagne and floating cubes of slowly defrosting blood. A minced selection of melting candle wax lay beside the meat, along with the bitter rhubarb leaves and of course rat's tiny delicate spines to top it all off.

She threw back a gulp of her drink, bubbles frothing pleasantly along her teeth, blood providing a frosty tang. The hot wax gummed up her mouth if she chewed too much, she knew, so instead she swallowed them whole and chased it once again with her enormous cup so they wouldn't stick. Her stomach gobbled it all up with an appreciative gurgle.

"I'd quite like to try something more raw next time," she commented lightly to the chef. Kaito nodded so Conchita could nearly hear his spine screech with its rust. So tense. So worried. What did he think she was going to do, execute him for letting two sorts of foods touch? No, for she quite liked that, and she quite liked _him._ "Are you certain you don't want to join me?"

"I've already ea-eaten, my lady."

She chuckled, stretching her forkful of meat between her knife and teeth until the tendons snapped. "Hah, picking on my stores of food?"

He stared at her with terror, eyes a shade of blue that reminded her that she still yearned to taste poison dart frog. Before his lips could complete whatever word was cowering behind his sudden stammer, Conchita laughed again.

"No matter! All the more to go around! I'd be a crude lady for starving my servants within my own halls, wouldn't I? No one should starve. Everyone should have the luxury of food. Are you certain? I'm sure you would love this wolf."

Kaito refused her politely again. He was fidgeting more than usual, she noticed, all jerks and jolts from the top of his tall frame to his toes. She speared a morsel of each selection of food onto her fork then put it all in her mouth at once. Over her tongue saliva eagerly flooded, filling her wide maw to the top, teeth grinding the food into little pieces that floated in the river she forced down her throat. Her stomach, glutton it was, waited with open arms.

Kaito gave another fidget and the sight of it made her almost tense up and choke.

After forcing that enticing mixture down, she said, "What's wrong, cook?"

"I was—my lady, I wish to request—" Kaito's mouth twisted into half a nervous smile to reassure her. She listened with waning patience that ran on the same current as the shrinking content of her plate. "I would like to take leave from your castle, madam." He paused, let her hear it, let it sink in, then added hurriedly like he was trying to not let himself get away with merely the earlier request, "P-permanently."

"You want to leave?" Conchita exclaimed, rhubarb freezing between her molars. She was astonished to say the least, knuckles bleaching around her cutlery.

"Y...yes, my lady."

"Why would you want that?" she spat, forcing a twinge of kindness in her voice, but she had ran out of candle wax and the cubes of blood were lying half melted in barely an inch of champagne. "To leave me?"

"My family, they are lonely—"

"They haven't spoken a word of protest since you came to my service, Kaito, I don't see why they would fret now!"

He glimpsed at her for barely a second, hands wringing. "My daughter is sick—"

"And are you a doctor?" Conchita's lips curled back. She needed him. "You are a cook for the great Conchita, you are not a man of the village. What would you do there? You'd be useless, to your family and to yourself!"

"I...can find another line of work. Please, I beg of you—"

His voice was getting twisted and whiny and to suppress her fury Conchita rammed the last hunk of meat in between her teeth. She chewed viciously and snarled, "Your meaning lies here. If you're to leave, you'd become nothing, you'd—become—" The crushed flesh, now the consistency of batter, skidded down her throat. The smell of iron blood and dankness rushed up her nose from an unidentified source but it made her voice tremble as she hissed, "Enough, Kaito. Here you have purpose. Nowhere else."

His blue eyes were attached to her much like how a convicted man stares at the noose. Complete mute fear. She bit through the frosty center of a blood cube, swallowing it hard to try and settle the rolling of her stomach—it was getting annoyed at all this speaking, all these words betraying the use of her mouth. Kaito didn't say a single word.

"Now, back to my kitchen. I'd like snake, next. With those sides of glazed crow feathers you pick so well."

Kaito gasped, "My lady—"

"Enough. Go."

"I meant to say—I... My lady, whatever you wish. It will take only slightly over one hour."

"One _hour?_ Get me wine and cheese while I wait."

And with that Kaito turned and scampered from the hall, his shoulders sunk as if she had just whipped him. She shook her head, digging deeply into the remaining bones, wiping them along the venom juice that had gathered along the porcelain. These people were going to drive her mad.

**X**

A young Conchita did not have any money.

It did not matter much for a young girl for she wasn't allowed to buy anything anyways, but when it was reflected in the state of her family, she felt estranged and sad and cold beneath the night sky as they slept on the cobblestone. Nothing was to her name, not even the clothes draped across the jutting bones of her back—that belonged to the generous tailor down the street whom she'd put in her debt by cleaning his sewing room floors. But she was to return it by the end of the week, and it would be back to her mother's shawls and father's socks for her.

Food was scarce but she was always hungry—her parents had gained the habit of feeding themselves first instead of their young daughter for she would lap up the whole plate with hardly a single thought. They told her, "Don't eat it all so quickly. Savour the tastes, laden your stomach with its weight so you won't be so hungry later," but she did not learn very well. She devoured the horses' hay and pigs' slop when she could sneak her way into the village's largest farmland. She swallowed so quickly, she didn't know how they tasted at all (yet perhaps that was a good thing).

One day when she was fifteen but still had the body of a child as those starved often do, her father managed to sell a pair of wide-eyed dolls to man looking for a gift for his daughter. The family all gathered around his handful of coins, shiny, tiny exchanges for her grandmother's ancient childhood toys, glimmering like the eyes of angels. They all chose together what they would buy—but only with a third of the amount they had, because it was always mindful not to spend it all at once.

They purchased a loaf of bread and three apples. On the first day, they shared half the bread and one apple, cut into pale slivers with crunchy red backs like ladybugs. They all relished the fresh texture and sweet crispness, but when they had all gone to sleep with their stomachs quickly burning away their meal, Conchita was not able to rest.

Her insides were screaming. They were furious to have been taunted in such a way, only a tiny rainfall of crumbs and seeds, nothing to truly taste, nothing to truly cease the endless moaning and cramping of hunger. So she'd watched her parents' sleeping breaths and grabbed the second apple. She could say it was stolen by a grimy gypsy if they asked in the morning.

She sunk her teeth into the flesh of the fruit, juice spurting along her lips and down her chin. She hastily chewed its meat, wiping her face with her hand. The first bite was not even down her throat before she dove for a second, then a third. A fourth. Fifth, sixth, and the core cracked against her teeth but she gnawed through it too. Her teeth were sharp from nibbling sticks and beetle carapaces and soon the whole apple was gone.

She stared at the emptiness of her palm, oil lanterns showing her just where the sticky apple blood lay—she eagerly licked her palm, tasting the sweet sugar and grimy dirt.

Her stomach ached even more. It wasn't used to such rich foods, but it wanted more and more.

Conchita's mind told her not to, that this was her parents' food too, but that persistent claw inside of her launched out her fist and grabbed the bread. It was gone in moments, then the last apple.

She grinned to herself now that it was all complete. Surely her stomach would stop its crying now; stop assaulting her with so much pain.

Instead it just bit some more and she searched the midnight streets until she found a bone in front of the butcher's, licked clean by stinking dog saliva, and she gnawed on it until morning just to shut herself up.

Her father knocked her against the wall and her mother screamed at her not to be so selfish, not to be so disgusting, not to be so wasteful. Her parents beat her a few times more before they set off their separate daily paths in search of food, hiding their money well from her, and then she sat alone and sucked her own blood out of her wounds to nurse them.

**X**

It was a summery afternoon when they died.

They were beaten alive by the man whom they sold the dolls to and his cohorts—he claimed they were gypsies, as all poor slimy people were, and they'd cursed his home. (After he'd returned with the dolls, it had set on fire the next day.)

Conchita had hidden in the shadows, wary, her tears silent and sliding over her lips, trailing salt that would later dry and taste like gutter rain. She'd clutched her knees and watched the blood fall, the yells finally silencing into nothingness as her mother fell and her father was knocked hard on the back of the head, his knuckles bruised from punching back, or maybe from the times he'd sloppily shoved Conchita against the brick walls. The alley echoed with the villainous men's footfalls and as soon as they were gone, a shaking young girl crawled out of the stones and rushed to her parents' sides.

They were the only things she had, for her friends had long left her when she'd stolen from their families and her imaginary friends had left her when they realised she was so ruled by her inner desires. And here they laid, broken and passed beyond the veil of living, blood trickling onto the dirt and crippled bodies nearly holding each other in an embrace in their death.

She needn't check. She knew they were dead. She was a keen girl who knew the soft pulse a heartbeat made in the air, and now the only one surrounding the three was hers, palpitating and warring with the persistent sobbing of every piece of her.

Her tears were futile.

Hours took her, crippling her body into a howling, shaking mess of filth, brown hair stringy and sweaty and lips ripped apart with the wide yawns of sobbing she created. No one came to observe what the racket was; no one had ever come to notice her except for when she listened to what was inside of her, and that was the thing they yelled at her for. Why was she punished for being an existence, finally?

She thought then of two nights ago when her family had hurt her and she'd gone a night without food—since she'd devoured the whole meal before, her father and mother bought more bread for only themselves and ate it in front of her vindictively. She thought that night while they slept that she should open their jaws and take out what they'd eaten like a baby bird does, but decided against it.

"_Don't be so selfish, Conchita! Don't be so wasteful!"_

The other night it was an angry criticism, and other days, it was a thoughtful word of wisdom. Wasting was not something to be done in the world, or else there appeared the dregs of others' egotism, like her family was. She couldn't have this happen again. She was miserable and no one else deserved it.

So she struggled and shoved their bodies into the well-hidden shadows, and slipped out into the waning sunlight of evening. It had crept up on her when she was crying, but she now thanked it. She needed it.

She found the hidden markets down where the gypsies sang and created spells. She and her old friends had found this place one day when playing, and although it had terrified them into years of nightmares, Conchita was once again thankful of circumstance... A gypsy woman sat and beaded a necklace and gave Conchita a cat's-eye glare when she approached.

To this woman, Conchita sold her parents' corpses. (But first she snatched all the money they had been hiding on them.)

She watched the haggard woman turn their faces in between her claws of forefinger and thumb, watched her poke at their eyes and check their brittle finger bones. If Conchita was to leave them here or bury them in the cemetery, all they would do was rot. And now, they gave her money, piles of it, poured into her hands and spilling onto the ground like a delicious, hopeful waterfall—they gave her money and her new commencement.

She told herself the mantra that had guided her life—don't be wasteful, don't be wasteful. Over and over and over. Once upon a time, she didn't pay it any mind, but she was determined to be smarter and more able now that she didn't have her parents to punish her—it was her stomach that did the punishing, ripping her apart as painful as childbirth when she would pass the butcher's, pockets full of gold, but would steal only an apple or a loaf a day. (Thieving from the butcher was dangerous, too many cleavers within reach.)

She continued this way, eating sparsely but as often as she would let herself, and hunting the fields and streets for dead dogs and children. She often found newborns hidden away behind bins, swaddled in ratty blankets or garbage parchment, their bodies pale and limp as boned fish. Some had ugly growths or twisted spines, Devil's defects. The gypsies paid best for those ones.

Gypsies had no need for money. They gave her mountains.

Once she watched a woman beat in the heads of a litter of fresh kittens, one by one by one, each live one mewling in their blind confusion until their chorus was completely silenced. Conchita scooped them all up when the woman was gone, but didn't make it all the way to the gypsies before her resolve crumbled and she ate three raw.

**X**

The sous-chef was who came in that day, setting platters and platters before her with a gentle smile on his face, but silence in his voice. He was a newer one, come from the country with his sister and a need for a job, and she was not to let him flounder around forever to only land as a shoemaker or a tailor. So she brought the lovely blonde twins into her chateau on the spot, and was pleased to discover that the boy was an excellent inventive cook, and the girl was polite and cleaned her dishes and floors and beds and clothing every time a drop of wine missed her lips. The girl, Rin, had found it a bit odd when Conchita had taken the cloth from her after she'd dabbed up a spot of lemon juice from the table, then sucked the juice back out, but from then on she was as quiet and patient as her brother.

This meal—her fourth of the day—wafted strong, enticing scents that hung like a halo around her; lamb and pheasant, parchment ink glazing the stalks of fresh celery, boiled wine, cracked pinecones imported, eagle talons and rose roots. Her dessert lay sparkling, honey and thick white clumps of sugar embedded into rich thick cake, sided with the ultimate delicacy of butterfly wings to add a demure beauty and exquisite taste.

She smiled at Len and quickly dived into her food.

He spoke—he was one of the few that understood, she was a nice woman, and as long as it was not a complaint she enjoyed the music of others' speech along with her food. "My lady, how are you feeling this morning?"

"Quite well, Len." She swallowed half a stalk of the vegetable, it tumbling onto the growing pile in her appreciative stomach. "That topping to my octopus earlier, what was that?"

He held his hands behind his back and answered neatly, "Stained glass, my lady. Ground to the weight of salt."

"Yes! That was fantastic!"

"A generous donation from the church."

She grinned a merry flash of her teeth, stained dark yellow and black from all her culinary extensions. "It set my mouth alight, and this is equally as sublime. You truly continue to amaze me."

"I am honoured, but Kaito cooked the meats, madam."

"Hm," she sawed off an unequal chunk of the food in question, "that explains why it is once again so tough. Remind him I'd prefer a little blood."

"I will, madam."

"You're a wonderful boy, Len. Wonderful. Your sister, too. Where is she?"

"Cleaning your sleeping chambers, my lady."

"And I hadn't even asked her!" Conchita giggled, ecstatic, patting herself on the back for her decision of hiring the twins. "Superb."

"My lady, I'd like to ask, may I return to the kitchens? There is a course I need to tend to beforehand, it cooks quite slowly, and I know how you hate to wait."

"I do indeed! Do what you have to, Len, but visit me when you don't have anything to tend to?"

Len bowed from the waist, smiling softly. "Yes, my lady."

He turned away and left the cavernous room, and when the door shut behind him, had to press his hand against his mouth to fail at smothering his gag. His stomach ached to retch, gathering up all the smells of the kitchen and the meals and her _breath_ and whirling them into a gassy acidic filth.

When finally he thought he had composed himself, Len slowly rose to his full height and wiped the bile off of his palm, disgusted with himself. The Lady Conchita paid him generously, he had his own room and own lavatory, but when he was faced with her deceptively bright eyes and scarred, stained mouth as gluttonous and lecherous as a snake's, he wanted to run very, very far away. He hadn't known that by being her cook he was going to be subject to endless hours in the kitchen, even being woken up in the early mornings to cook her awful desserts and catch the rats that were attracted to the smell that just seeped from her skin no matter how many baths she took. She frightened him, and he wasn't afraid to be honest on that point.

Len travelled down the hallway to the kitchens. A blind man could find it in this strange mansion, for the smells were so pungent and the steam was so thick. Swinging open the door he was assaulted as usual with a racket and a wall of stink.

Kaito was over one of the dozen cauldrons, mixing a soup with a long-handled ladle and sweat dabbing on his brow. Len could only imagine the horror he had had to endure, working here alone before he and his sister were captured.

"How is she?" Kaito asked sheepishly, looking up to Len and quickly back down.

Len stripped himself of his dark vest, already beginning to sweat, also. "She's alright. Wished that you'd leave the meat a little bloodier, though."

"Oh." Kaito's silent features then snapped to life, eyes widening. "Oh, oh dear. I did, didn't I? I'm not thinking very well nowadays..."

Len sighed, moving in beside his friend—who was becoming his only companion, the longer they were trapped here, only means of escape the castle gates where they ordered and received strange shipments. Sometimes the food they got was rotted because the carriage men knew where it was going, and they also knew the woman inside wouldn't care how ruined her food was as long as she got to eat it. "You can't displease her that way, Kaito. She won't let you go because you're slippery with her requests."

The navy-haired man gave a pinching scowl as if Len was accusing him of a lie. They both knew he wasn't. "I didn't know I'd ever find trouble with someone so easy to please..."

"Do you need any help?"

"Yes, actually, I—the breads—" He pointed behind him clumsily, almost hitting a hanging array of spoons and skewers, "Can you knead it?"

Len nodded and moved along the rows and rows of fires to a wood counter where a slab of pale dough was laying flaccidly in a pile of poorly spread flour.

"How is it not dry and cracked yet?" Len asked, subtly fanning himself. "It's Hell itself in here."

"Every time it starts, I just—I—the koi oil."

"Huh."

They lulled into silence as usual, cooking and baking away, each on edge for the very rare but very impending angry cry of Conchita when she was done her meal but none were arriving. She would scream as if she was being torn apart, sobbing and gasping around her shrieks and when they would come to find her she would be crying on the table, clutching her stomach. Len hypothesized it was just her insides retaliating against the assault they constantly suffered from, but when Rin had asked one day, she'd said she could never stop eating or else her stomach acid boiled and melted her ribs and tortured her.

She was crazy. Len knew that. He just hoped that sooner than later, she'd kill herself from her biggest fancy, eating.

And then a loud crash distracted the boy from where he fit the bread into pans. He whirled around and saw Kaito's hands in furious fists, the ladle splashed on the floor.

"I'm leaving," he said firmly.

Len blinked.

Kaito's eyes were alight, his jaw trembling with how tightly it was clenched. He stiffly enunciated, "I'm exhausted of this work—I—I've been here for too many years! My family needs me. She doesn't understand because I—I bet she ate her family, the disgusting pig of a woman, but I love them and I can't rot here any longer."

Len wanted to beg him to stay so he wouldn't be alone, but the man looked as if his mind was made up. His stammering did not take away from the resignation he held, the way his words came from a very real placed laced with rage and venom.

"Good luck," he said carefully, and when Kaito stomped out, he quietly snuck along behind him.

The door to the grand hall burst open with the noise of snapping bone. The woman looked up from the slop she was shovelling into her mouth, shocked. And as Kaito opened his mouth to speak, Len realised, in a strange swell of his heart, that Conchita had no true power. She hardly stood from her throne except to sleep and, on occasion, convulse when the poisons she devoured became too much, and she had no guards or dungeons to banish them. Why was he so scared of her?

"I wish to leave the castle, my lady," Kaito said, but it sounded more like an order than the polite request it was phrased as.

The woman sneered, bloody tendons weaving in her teeth. "I already told you that isn't possible, cook!"

"I am no longer in your debt. I will return to my family."

Her voice rose to a shriek that bit Len's ears, but he remained crouched by the doorway. "You cannot go, you fool! You don't matter out there! You will not matter! Here is the only place you exist, and when you cross that gate, you're only a bag of flesh. You idiots don't understand that, none of you!"

Kaito steeled himself and turned away.

"No! Come back! You'll be worthless, Kaito. I can't allow a man to render himself worthless."

And Kaito's steps continued and Len felt his heartbeat thump, imagining himself grabbing Rin by the wrist and the two of them running, running past the threshold and into the fresh air and out the gates and far off to the village where they could see their parents again and—

Conchita overturned her table with a monstrous scream, the food and dishes flying through the air like frozen spears before hitting ground, noises of thunder.

Kaito flinched and spun around and Len cursed him.

"You're a waste out there! A waste of flesh! Of potential! Of life!" Her face was turning as red as her dress, teeth gnashing around the words like she wanted to eat them too. "Come here!"

He was frozen, all words of strength dissolved.

"COME HERE!"

She was not going to wait for him to make a decision. He was alarmed to watch her race towards him, faster than he'd ever seen her, swooping skirt making her look like the reaper. Kaito's feet were nailed into the floor until she grabbed him around the throat and yanked him to her.

Len's heart had stopped in horrified anticipation with the rest of him.

She growled, "If you will not do my bidding, then I'll make you useful another way."

And she dragged him, alarmingly strong, pinching down hard on his windpipe so soon his face went blue, down the floor to where Len hid.

He jumped up and scurried like a frightened mouse back into the kitchens. His legs were shaking but he found himself dunking the ladle back into the burning soup just as Conchita kicked open the door.

Len stared wide-eyed, pretending to be obedient and eager for orders, but she didn't care about his persona. She stomped past and grabbed one of the skewers on the rack and every vein in Len's body shrunk to leave himself in a din of his own thumping pulse as she stabbed Kaito through the eyes.

He went limp and she let him drop to the floor.

Then her eyes rested on Len and he forced his muscles to churn the soup faster, a perfect servant, not numb and horrified; it was a smile she next afflicted him with.

"Can you work your magic on the acid of traitors, Len, dear?"

**X**

She made him cut away Kaito's clothes and dump them on the floor, then she caught their scent and exclaimed that he should garnish the platters with them for a neat palette of colour but all Len could smell was sweat and dust.

She made him cut off his head, slit the arteries and drain the blood for her drink. She stood there watching as he fought with himself as much as he fought with cutting Kaito's spine, blinking away burning, frightened tears and vomit and the soft pulses of blackness that tried to pull him under.

She made him chop open his belly, snap back the ribs, and pleasantly suggested that he choose which organs to leave raw and which to cook and which to save for another day; which tasted best once the coldness had set in and the excess blood had drained? He'd stammered a whisper that he didn't know and she'd chuckled. "I'm sure humans cook the same as cattle, Len. I would suggest ape, but you've never served me that, it was Kaito who did. Quite pleasant, actually, although rather sinewy."

And worst of all she made him take out the slippery ropes of intestines, the wet pockets of kidneys and liver, the large veiny sponges of lung. She made him keep the heart inside. The whole time she was watching and licking her lips, stomach roaring in anticipation.

It was when he had to move _his _head to allow himself more room to work that he couldn't take it anymore. Kaito's eye sockets flooded with rich blood, his skin a yellowish pale and he recognised the man he'd lived with and spoke with and consoled in for only weeks, but for all it meant to him it felt like they'd known each other for years. He was disgusted and hollowed the way he was ordered to hollow Kaito, arms and front sticky and drenched, body burning inside out from all the sins he was committing. Where was Rin?

He couldn't stop himself and hiccupped and watery, acidic vomit spilled past his lips before he'd even had the chance to back away. It burned the bitten cuts in his lips. He sobbed and dropped the knife, shaking uncontrollably, chest heaving with the desperate gasp of air before he spat up his stomach contents again. He didn't eat much here; emptying himself out even more hurt more than he could imagine. He crumbled to the floor, blood trickling off the edge of the counter and onto his head, down his neck, warm like rain. He began to cry horrible, messy sobs, and it was Conchita's arms that tried to console him. Her lips that coaxed sharply against his, her tongue that lapped up the tears and vomit around his mouth.

**X**

She ate her servant with the biggest smile on her face. The arrangements of textures, from his soft supple skin to his knotted hair that coated her mouth, the rich meat of muscle and tough shells of fingernails, crunching cartilage, slippery fat. Chewy lungs, veins braided together and sliding down her throat like little snakes. The fresh blood slithered into the fissures dug out in her mouth by her earlier meal of mirror shards—her tongue flopped deliciously numb and heavy, reminding her of fish, of the gelatinous tentacles of squid, and her stomach groaned in anticipation for the next meal.

He served her well. Her stomach was settled for a long few hours afterwards, in which she didn't know what to do with her time other than try to help clean the floors she'd messed alongside Rin.

**X**

Len had fallen into a deep, deep silence after Kaito's murder. This night he laid in his room, the descent of the sun his release, almost as true and merciful as death.

Rin sat on the edge of his bed, touching at her hair one moment, ruffling her maid dress the next. Finally she whispered, "We have to leave."

"How?"

Rin gave a light sigh, as tiny as her voice. "It's... Look, the door is right there. The village isn't far. I've never seen her leave the castle, maybe she's afraid to. I don't think she'd go after us. Kaito was stupid and left right in her face, giving her an opening to—stop him."

Len grit his teeth. "Don't talk about Kaito like it was his fault."

"Sorry."

"You didn't know him."

"Sorry, I said. Calm down, Len." She shook her head, makeshift blonde braids tumbling out into lazy waves. "Listen to yourself. You've been so tense. We really do need to leave."

"It's not that easy."

"I just told you how simple it was! Tonight, Len, let's slip away." She turned and lunged to grab his hand, but he jerked it away. "Please."

"We can't just walk out."

"You're so scared of her..."

His voice shook in his throat. "She killed him! She killed him with a smile! And then...god, Rin, you didn't see her _eat_ him! The woman is the Devil."

"Then let's send her back to Hell."

He recognised the clever, knowledgeable smile in Rin's shadowed face, and although a part of his heart automatically reacted with want to partner it with his own, he couldn't. He tucked his freezing fingers into his palms and whispered her name forlornly.

"We can burn the place down. Set her aflame. Watch her crumble."

Len closed his eyes and imagined the woman smouldering. She would chafe and bubble, all the poison and blood and awful worlds she'd devoured boiling into a slimy, stinking cloud of smoke.

Rin whispered, "We can _try."_

**X**

The twins slipped into the kitchen, quiet as they had been as children sneaking around with the games of their friends, hide-and-seek with its familiar building of shaking anticipation. Len was frigid. Rin was strong and silent, the tougher sibling, the one with the powerful ideas.

They each took a lantern full of oil, and Rin was the one who handled the matches. Breathing so quietly it was like they weren't at all, the grand hall opened up to them, the throne where Conchita ate herself insane.

Len looked at Rin. She smiled a soft smile, reassuring, and tipped her lantern—lightly viscous oil dripped to the floor, pitter-pattering like the footsteps of mice, trailing and slithering like maggots. Len followed her example and soon the glossy floors and stairs to her room were glazed in flammable liquid the way Conchita's lips shone with meat's grease.

They backed off towards the grand entrance. Len was not speaking and his face was cold and stony, Rin noticed—she realised this and it made her stomach flip. Was he this way because he didn't believe it would work? The clues and steps were all laid before him, clear as day—she had only swipe the match and set it down and if they ran fast enough, they would be free. Was he so stubborn? Was he so numb?

She took out her weaponry, their Holy Grail. No matter if Len was disenchanted—right now, she was elated, furious at their situation and nerves vibrating with fear and at the same time, courage. She would drag him out if she had to. She would tell him stories of their lives before this horror, until he realised this was all a dream.

She swiped the match, grabbed her brother's hand, and the hall greeted them with a grin of flaming fangs.

They ran.

**X**

Conchita awoke with her body burning.

Flames had not yet reached her but her skin felt so warm it ached and froze; her eyes slipped open to a wreath of fire chewing her walls. Her door was gone and beyond it, Hell gained on her heels.

She jolted up, a scream tearing through her lips. Her body growled and roared the way it always did when she was awake and not eating, but she tried to ignore it, tried to shove herself to her feet and find a way to run. Her room was immense and beautiful but that was no help in an escape that she needed so desperately right now.

"Len!" she shrieked. "Rin! Please!"

No one responded. If they did, she wouldn't have heard over the laughter of the fire.

Her eyes tore through her walls, through her decor, trying to find something that would quell the approaching horror. Nothing. Nothing. She trembled and screamed some more, but heat was crawling into her, burning like flesh fresh from the stove.

She stumbled back and hit the far wall, chest heaving with hardly any oxygen to spare. Embers spat and caught on the canopy of her bed, tears of the fabric falling to the floor.

She stared at one fixedly, for a moment, its rich violet skin hosting the charmingly dancing flame. It was a small one, beckoning her, and she wondered for an instant what fire would feel like in her belly.

Another scream bubbled her up and made her burst, rushing from the horrible temptation and her fear of it, fear of herself. She had often pondered the taste of her unattainable things like the sky and of the myths and of God, but the closest she could taste were words—the flames and smoke were here now, though, alluring, making her imagine the sheen of ash that would be all that is left of a hole in her tongue.

She fell to the far end of the bed, and realised the existence of a soft moonlight window on her ceiling. The roof slanted, and it was on the closer end to the floor, but still out of reach. Conchita raced to grab a chair, climbed on, and crawled her way onto the blazing bed canopy.

It ripped under her weight immediately, crutched by the fire, but her fingers desperately reached and clawed and tore open the clasp of the window. She gave it a shove just as she sunk again, fabric tearing with a triumphant cackle—her wrist just managed to catch on the sill.

Using all her strength, breathing hard, tears evaporating with how close she was to the fire, Conchita hauled herself up to the tiny opening, the tiny exit. Now was of the blazes that devoured her village when she was little, swallowed up her home and her dolls and her littlest sister, turned her parents bitter and their pockets empty. Turned her stomach into the whining, pitiful beast with large claws and a larger mouth that aimed to fill her up with whatever object she could, if only to smother away her fear of existing.

She climbed her way out, legs nipped in the hold of fire but she managed to roll away in time. The winter air hit her from one side, cold through her nightgown, but through the other smoke broiled a hot stream of smoke. She collapsed and let gravity slide her off the roof to the second level's ceiling, then slip off of that and to the unforgiving platform of moist dirt. Her entrance doors were aflame, crumbling in a heap with a groan.

She did not stand up from the dirt, back burning from merely the near presence of flames. Her eyes were glazed and blurred, throat constricting away tears that she had not known since she found her parents dead, but through the hollow sheen she could see trampled grass, skidded dirt.

Two pairs of footprints, the gate swinging wildly in the wind.

They'd left her. Useless. Stupid, useless, broken children, and they'd left her.

She dropped her body into the grass and trembled like a doll, the way it shook in her grandmother's hand as she lovingly sewed it a smile.

**X**

Conchita sat among the wreckage.

It was all ash and ember, glowing every time the wind blew, splintered wood and collapsed stone. Her throne was reduced to broiled satin and crumbled, melted metal, but she sat in what remained of it with the last of her pride and her love.

She gathered handfuls of black and grey and swallowed them thickly, one fist after the other. They tasted like nothing, but what use was a pile of burning, spiritless nothing to her? To anyone? So she ate it because she didn't know how else to make things matter if they were not to be food.

Her body betrayed her at the command, gurgling and sneering and leading her hand to gather more dirt and stone. Her teeth ached. Her stomach said more.

A smashed mirror glinted with filthy light up at her now that she had cleared away the embers. She inquisitively picked it up, eyes sliding half-shut with an obscure mix of both concentration and exhaustion, breath fogging a moist circle on it. The shard was a pretty shape of triangle, and she wiped away the rubbish that resided on it.

Her face shone back, drawn and sweaty with exhaustion, eyes hollowly regarding her in return.

The expanse of despair and blandness before her made her feel like a child again, but the face there was an adult, a mature woman with a permanent stain of blood around her lips. The fire was her destruction, the ashes her poverty, what she slept in every night and did not dare inhale, but now here she was, without dignity, stuffing herself with dirt. Her stomach said: something rich. It reminded her of that first bite of apple, sinful and delicious, ripe and bursting crisp and cold over her tongue and teeth.

She remembered the feeling of blood falling through her hair after her parents had beat her.

She remembered watching them die.

She mostly remembered the mantra, the prayer. "_Don't be so selfish, Conchita. Don't be so wasteful." _

The gypsies had accepted her parents' corpses with dry chuckles and malicious smiles and glints of their cat's-eye jewels. They told her such a donation was appreciated, such a gentle, kind girl to have given the lives of her parents' to God, and given their bodies to those who opposed him. She believed them. She was needed, she was helpful.

And here she had given the cooks and maid a place to live, money to hold the way she hadn't at their age, a beautiful woman to converse with and tend to. But now that they were gone, what was she to do? She felt so alone here in her wilderness, people so far away, no ability to help.

Her stomach moaned. Her stomach beat itself against its ribs, cried of suicide, cried of loss. Cried of hunger. The never-ending hunger she had long grown so tired of yet so obsessed with, filling herself to bursting.

It began to cramp especially tightly, and imitate the sugary touch of apple on her tongue, but just when she moved to savour it, it vanished.

And then the mirror cut her.

She watched the single bead of blood drop, hypnotizing, down her finger, and did not think before she dropped the mirror and lapped it up eagerly. It ran hot and prosperous with taste on her tongue, and it was the beast that resided within her that reached up again and grabbed her hand and put it into her mouth.

She bit and blood ran richly through her teeth and she bit harder and the bones snapped away, delicious slivers that opened holes in her lips for more blood to run and more blood to enter and penetrate her and run her full and hot with this gold seeping from her own body. She swallowed, fingernail scraping her throat as it went down, and she could not stop, taking the next finger and the next and the next then digging her sharp teeth through her wrist. The noise of her skin breaking was gorgeous. She sucked the joint between her arm and hand and she remembered Kaito but he did not taste as good as this.

The next arm, she tore lovely strips of pale skin and found it so soft down her throat, warm like she'd yearned the flames to be, the bursting of pain electrifying, pleasing. It all took her by surprise, but she would not stop, lost in a flurry of gouging teeth and grateful snarls and her head spun along the silky waves of black, faster and faster out of the pain and out of the ecstasy. This was her payment. This was her usefulness. The monster within her pushed and pushed for more but it was not with anger, it was with cheerful, childish fervour.

For those moments, her own flesh pulling from her own bones and slipping effortlessly, lusciously, through her body, she was blissful.

And she wouldn't let a drop of that feeling go to waste.


End file.
